Drawn To What Is Most Unlike Us
by nancystagerat
Summary: Five drabbles about the two Hogwarts Founders most unlikely to even coexist, let alone fall in love. But love they did. Helga Hufflepuff/Salazar Slytherin.


He had asked her to marry him.

_She chokes back pain so deep it aches even through the marrow in her bones__._

He had loved her, in his way.

_She is unremarkable; neither as tall nor as willowy as Rowena, with none of the filmy elphine beauty of pale skin or dark hair or blue eyes. She is not brilliant, or brave; only stubborn. He is regal and she is...nothing._

She holds dishwater curls back from her face, to keep them from sticking to tearstained skin.

_His onyx radiance had been drawn to her and she to him, moon and sun. And like the moon and sun they are destined to forever dance away from the embrace they both so crave. To never touch, not that way. _

Merlin, how she'd wanted to say yes. To forget the fights and the doubt with its vice grip on her heart. To forget the others and the students that even she, ever-patient Helga, so often doubted were even worth the effort of protecting.

_The tears come, soundless. _

And yet she had refused him. She loathes him and adores him and would offer up the very blood in her veins if he so desired her life.

_He holds everything she is between his hands, but she cannot give him what was never hers. _

The children he would feed to his great beast are not her sacrifice to make.

_And he is gone. _

_

* * *

_

"Salazar, _listen_ to me-"

"_At what cost?_" he bellows, grey eyes half-mad with rage and a biting futility that makes her ache even through the violence in his voice. "_At what cost shall we achieve your precious unity?_"

"The only cost is ignorance!" she counters; her throat burns and her hands throb where her nails bite into her palms, but if she can only make him _hear_ her... "Isn't it enough to have the Muggles fear us for what we can do? Hasn't there been enough persecution without wizards holding knives to each other's throats and daring to see who'll slit first?"

And in less than an instant he shoves her against the stone and _her_ throat becomes the one threatened, his hand is half-closed around her neck and she has never been so terrified before in her life, but bites back the flinch and stares straight ahead and forces herself to hold his gaze.

"The half-bloods are killing us, Helga," he says, suddenly quiet; his thumb strokes her throat with unnerving gentleness, vicious against her skin. "They poison and dilute our blood with _filth_. Will you coddle and mother your precious mutts until there is no magic left?"

* * *

His face presses to her neck and she smells like heaven, like warmth and vanilla and the sweetness of her curls all riled up from lovemaking. He's left marks on her collarbone and breasts, blue-purple roses that darken beneath her skin, and she's left stinging scratches down his back, but in the quiet and catching of breath after release her fingers are gentle. They stroke through his short hair, down his neck and shoulders, back up to trace the line of his jaw, his eyelids, stroke his lips.

She cradles his head to her chest and he leaves kisses there, squeezes her slight frame closer to his. She loves so completely, falls into bed at night and absolves him of the day's transgressions against her. He hopes she'll feel his remorse in the embrace.

She is the best of him. And all he does is swallow up her light and make her cold.

* * *

"Have you ever thought about children, Salazar?" she asks offhand, chin in her hands and leaning on his desk as he collects a pile of potions essays in need of grading. Her tone is light, unhurried, and she smiles through her eyelashes at how he tries his hardest to ignore her.

"Not in the least, Hufflepuff," he says, scanning the parchment in front of him.

"But can't you picture a little one somewhere in your imagination? With your eyes, maybe?" she baits him; a smile quirks up one half of her mouth. "Or the set of your jaw?" He glances at her and goes back to his papers, face impassive.

"A dark, blue-eyed little boy?"

His eyes narrow over the second essay, and Helga grins to herself.

"You should not entertain such absurd notions, lest you be _severely_ disappointed," he snarls, eyes hard and fixated on his work, dismissing her. "Is there not something less supremely irritating for you to do that is not an impediment to my work?"

She leaves him to his papers and his thoughts, and it's long before the walls will hear the ache in his words.

"My daughter would be fair-haired."

* * *

She writhes, soft and warm under hands that deal pleasure even as they draw whimpers of pain from between bitten lips. In a few hours' time daylight will light the bruises on her hips and hide the desire she sets pulsing in his veins, but come the fall of darkness he'll soothe her hurts with kisses up the inside her thighs. He marks her until he tastes salt tears when his lips wander back to her face.

Her pain is exquisite, and he drinks it in like rich wine on his tongue. The more she endures for him the more he takes, the more he takes the more he wants. It makes him feel wretched but she is heat itself caught in his grip, and he would rather freeze her slowly than ever let the sun slip through his fingers.

* * *

_**A/N: Well, this was...new. Probably ooc, definitely a bit of a crack!ship, and absolutely chock-full of artistic license, but for some reason they work for me. Reviewers get to be appointed Prefects! I'd love to hear any comments you might have :)**_


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